jeff passan carlos correa reporting
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Carlos Correa knew his second trip to free agency was going to be interesting. There’s no way he was anticipating something like this, though. He’s now agreed to three long-term deals with three different clubs in under one calendar month. First, it was for 13 years and $350 million with the San Francisco Giants. Then, it was the Mets’ 12-year, $315 million agreement. And now? He’s back with the Minnesota Twins for six years and $200 million (guaranteed).

Throw in about two and a half weeks of negotiation with the Mets to try and finalize a contract and we’ve got the definition of a roller coaster ride. It was hard to wait so long for a resolution. Do you know what made it a little bit harder, though? Having to read countless tweets and articles mostly recycling the same information over and over.

It’s obviously a big story that Correa’s Mets deal was taking so long to get across the finish line. People wanted to know what was going on, so many reporters did the best they could to keep people informed. But still, it was exhausting to follow, especially since each report made it seem like there was a bunch of brand-new information included (narrator: there wasn’t).

This saga dragged on long enough that just about every major MLB news breaker got in on the action. There was Andy Martino, Ken Rosenthal, Jon Heyman, and Jim Duquette, to name a few. And no, I’m not giving “MLB Scoops” any credit here. Do you know which baseball reporter didn’t get caught up in this circus for clicks?

That’d be ESPN’s Jeff Passan.

Do you know how many times he tweeted about Carlos Correa once news of the Mets having an issue with his medicals was reported? Zero times. Not once…not once! Passan tweeted two stories about the Correa-Mets agreement, one on December 21st and another on December 22nd.

After that, he didn’t mention him in a single tweet until Tuesday, when he was among the first to report that Correa now had a deal in place with the Twins.

Is it possible Passan just didn’t have an inside track on what was going on? That’s certainly possible, but it’s hard for me to believe since he’s among the biggest names in baseball reporting. Maybe he just didn’t want to get people’s hopes up (or down) throughout this ordeal?

This is anyone’s guess. However, it’s interesting to me that with so many opportunities to either break a report, confirm someone else’s, or add on to an existing one, it didn’t happen once on Twitter. People like Heyman, Rosenthal, Martino, and others are only as good as what their sources say. This isn’t their fault. It’s just that the sheer amount of time before the agreement fell apart amplified the fact that not many knew what was going on until the last couple of days.

They’re obviously still trustworthy reporters. What they report shouldn’t be directly tossed out the window. But while we were waiting for a resolution, you didn’t have to look hard on Twitter to see someone say, “If it doesn’t come from Passan, then I don’t believe it.”

The fact that he didn’t say a word about Correa over the past couple of weeks, only to swoop in and drop one of his patented bombs about the Twins agreement is more proof of that. When it comes to trusting reporters, Passan is all we’ve got, folks.

Matt Musico can be reached at matt.musico@xlmedia.com and you can follow him on Twitter: @mmusico8.

Matt Musico is an editor for ESNY. He’s been writing about baseball and the Mets for the past decade. His work has been featured on numberFire, MetsMerized Online, Bleacher Report, and Yahoo! Sports.